DOLLAR ‘STORE’: Student Jorge Hurtado pays $1 a day to the Pure Loyalty truck to hold his cellphone while he’s in school near Union Square. Photo: J.C. Rice

PUT ON HOLD: Freshman Chris Olivo pays to leave his phone at a bodega near Jefferson HS in Brooklyn. (William Farrington)

DOLLAR ‘STORE’: Student Jorge Hurtado pays $1 a day to the Pure Loyalty truck to hold his cellphone while he’s in school near Union Square. (
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The city’s ban on cellphones in schools is taking an amazing $4.2 million a year out of kids’ pockets, a Post analysis has found.

The students — who attend the nearly 90 high schools and middle schools with permanent metal detectors — pay $1 a day to store their phones either in stores or in trucks that park around the buildings.

The cottage industry has become so profitable, it rakes in $22,800 a day from some of the city’s poorest youngsters, whose families would rather shell out the money than risk their children’s safety.

“I’ve spent at least $500 on that truck over the last few years,” said Jonathan Lauriano, 18, who attends school on the Columbus HS campus in The Bronx.

“They should set up free lock boxes inside because we can’t all afford to pay a dollar a day.”

The controversial cellphone ban generated renewed criticism last week when a Safe Mobile Storage Corp. truck outside the Columbus campus was robbed at gunpoint of both its cash and the kids’ phones.

Critics said the robbery highlighted the Department of Education’s indifference to the plight of high-poverty families and Mayor Bloomberg’s unwillingness to compromise.

”He seems totally unconcerned with how his policies negatively affect students, and he seems totally scornful of the concerns of parents,” said Leonie Haimson, whose son is an eighth-grader at the School of the Future in Manhattan.

“A cellphone is absolutely essential in this day and age, and there’s no reason that kids who go to scanning schools should have to pay hundreds of dollars and be unfairly treated in that way.”

Officials have argued the phones are a classroom distraction and a potential menace since they can be used for cheating or organizing fights.

A DOE spokeswoman said the city has no intention of changing its policy.

“I cut back on food for the sake of my phone,” said Emily Luna, 17, a junior at the Thomas Jefferson HS campus in Brooklyn.

“My parents give me $20 a week, but that’s $5 a week that’s gone. I try to cut down on whatever I buy so I have enough to store my phone.”

Pure Loyalty, founded by former prison guard Vernon Alcoser, was the first of the truck operators. It has seven trucks in three boroughs. Safe Mobile Storage operates two trucks in The Bronx. Cell Secure Electronic Storage has one truck in The Bronx. Smart Dock has one truck in Brooklyn, and Archangel and Holding Cell each have one truck.

Edison Bardowell, whose nonprofit Legacy Corp. owns Cell Secure, suggested that the city use the existing trucks as vendors and pump any profits from their arrangement back into the schools.

“Or the city could find a way where students would go to the school ‘store’ where kids can check in their things,’’ Bardowell said. “There are ways to do it. I’d imagine the city just does not want to be responsible for what’s thousands of dollars worth of phones.”

Every detector school has either trucks or local stores, a school-safety source said, adding, “It’s easy money. It’s all cash.’’